Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

(THE CRISIS IN OUR PARTY)

Q. The NewIskra.Opportunism In Questions Of Organisation

As the basis for an analysis of the principles of the newIskrawe
      should unquestionably take the two articles of Comrade

			      Axelrod.[1]The concrete meaning of
      some of his favourite catchwords has already been shown at length. Nowwe
      must try to leave their concrete meaning on one side and delve down to the
      line of thought that caused the “minority” to arrive (in connection with
      this or that minor and petty matter) at these particular slogans rather than
      any others, must examine the principles behind these slogans, irrespective
      of their origin, irrespective of the question of “co-optation”. Concessions
      are all the fashion nowadays, so let us make a concession to Comrade Axelrod
      and take his “theory” “seriously”.

Comrade Axelrod’s basic thesis(Iskra, No 57) is that
      "from the very outset our movement harboured two opposite
      trends, whose mutual antagonism could not fail to develop and to
      affect the movement parallel with its own development". To be
      specific: “In principle, the proletarian aim of the movement [in
      Russia] is the same as that of western Social-Democracy.” But in
      our country the masses of the workers are influenced “by a
      social element alien to them”, namely, the radical
      intelligentsia. And so, Comrade Axelrod establishes the
      existence of an antagonism between the proletarian and the
      radical-intellectual trend in our Party.

In this Comrade Axelrod is undoubtedly right. The existence of
      such an antagonism (and not in the Russian Social-Democratic
      Party alone) is beyond question. What is more, everyone knows
      that it is this antagonism that largely accounts for the
      division of present-day Social-Democracy into revolutionary
      (also known as orthodox) and opportunist (revisionist,
      ministerialist, reformist) Social-Democracy, which during the
      past ten years of our movement has become fully apparent in
      Russia too. Everyone also knows that the proletarian trend of
      the movement is expressed by orthodox Social-Democracy, while
      the trend of the democratic intelligentsia is expressed by
      opportunist Social-Democracy.

But, after so closely approaching this piece of common
      knowledge, Comrade Axelrod begins timidly to back away from
      it. He does not makethe slightest attemptto analyse
      how this division manifested itself in the history of Russian
      Social-Democracy in general, and at our Party Congress in
      particular, although it is about the Congress that he is
      writing! Like all the other editors of the newIskra,Comrade Axelrod displays amortal fearof the minutes
      of this Congress. This should not surprise us after all that has
      been said above, but in a “theoretician” who claims to be
      investigating the different trends in our movement it is
      certainly a queer case oftruth-phobia. Backing away,
      because of this malady, from the latest and most accurate
      material on the trends in our movement, Comrade Axelrod seeks
      salvation in the sphere of pleasant daydreaming. He writes: “Has
      not legal Marxism, or semi-Marxism, provided our liberals with a
      literary leader? Why should not prankish history provide
      revolutionary bourgeois democracy with a leader from the school
      of orthodox, revolutionary Marxism?” All we can say about this
      daydream which Comrade Axelrod finds so pleasant is that if
      history does sometimes play pranks, that is no excuse forpranks of thoughton the part of people who undertake
      to analyse history. When the liberal peeped out from under the
      cloak of the leader of semi-Marxism, those who wished(and
      were able)to trace his “trend” did not allude to possible
      pranks of history, but pointed to tens and hundreds of instances
      of that leader’s mentality and logic, to all those
      characteristics of his literary make-up which betrayed the
      reflection of Marxism in bourgeois

      literature.[15]And if Comrade
      Axelrod, setting out to analyse “the general-revolutionary and
      the proletarian trend in our movement”, could producenothing,absolutely nothing, in proof or
      evidence that certain representatives of that orthodox wing of
      the Party which he so detests showed such and such a trend, he
      thereby issueda formal certificate of his own poverty.
      Comrade Axelrod’s case must be weak indeed if all he can do is
      allude to possible pranks of history!

Comrade Axelrod’s other allusion—to the “Jacobins”—is
      still more revealing. Comrade Axelrod is probably aware that the
      division of present-day Social-Democracy into revolutionary and
      opportunist has long since given rise—and not only in
      Russia—to “historical parallels with the era of the great
      French Revolution”. Comrade Axelrod is probably aware that theGirondists of present-day Social-Democracyeverywhere
      and always resort to the terms “Jacobinism”, “Blanquism”, and so
      on to describe their opponents. Let us then not imitate Comrade
      Axelrod’s truth-phobia,let us consult the minutes of our
      Congress and see whether they offer any material for an analysis
      and examination of the trends we are considering and the
      parallels we are discussing.

First example: the Party Congress debate on the
      programme. Comrade Akimov (“fully agreeing” with Comrade
      Martynov) says: “The clause on the capture of political power
      [the dictatorship of the proletariat] has been formulated in
      such a way—as compared with the programmes of all other
      Social-Democratic parties—that it may be interpreted, and
      actually has been interpreted by Plekhanov, to mean that the
      role of the leading organisation will relegate to the background
      the class it is leading and separate the former from the
      latter. Consequently, the formulation of our political tasks is
      exactly the same as in the case ofNarodnaya Volya.”
      (Minutes, p. 124.) Comrade Plekhanov and otherIskra-ists take issue with Comrade Akimov and accuse
      him of opportunism. Does not Comrade Axelrod find that this
      dispute shows us (in actual fact, and not in the imaginary
      pranks of history) the antagonism between thepresent-day
      Jacobinsand the present-dayGirondistsof
      Social-Democracy? And was it not because he found himself in the
      company of the Girondists of Social-Democracy (owing to the
      mistakes he committed) that Comrade Axelrod began talking about
      Jacobins?

Second example: Comrade Posadovsky declares that there is a
      “serious difference of opinion” over the “fundamental question”
      of “the absolute value of democratic principles”
      (p. 169). Together with Plekhanov, he denies their absolute
      value. The leaders of the “Centre” or Marsh (Egorov) and of the
      anti-Iskra-ists (Goldblatt) vehemently oppose this view
      and accuse Plekhanov of “imitating bourgeois tactics”
      (p. 170).This is exactly Comrade Axelrod’s idea of a
      connection between orthodoxy and the bourgeois trend, the
      only difference being that in Axelrod’s case it is vague and
      general, whereas Goldblatt linked it up with specific
      issues. Again we ask: does not Comrade Axelrod find that this
      dispute, too, shows uspalpably, at our Party Congress,
      the antagonism between the Jacobins and the Girondists of
      present-day Social-Democracy? Is it not because he finds himself
      in the company of the Girondiststhat Comrade Axelrod raises
      this outcry against the Jacobins?

Third example: the debate on Paragraph 1 of the Rules. Who is it
      that defends "the proletarian trend in our movement"?
      Who is it that insists that the worker is not afraid of
      organisation, that the proletarian has no sympathy for anarchy,
      that he values the incentive to organise? Who is it that warns
      us against the bourgeois intelligentsia, permeated through and
      through with opportunism?The Jacobins of
      Social-Democracy. And who is it that tries to smuggle
      radical intellectuals into the Party? Who is it that is
      concerned about professors, high-school students, free lances,
      the radical youth?The Girondist Axelrod together with the
      Girondist Lieber.

How clumsily Comrade Axelrod defends himself against the “false
      accusation of opportunism” that at our Party Congress was openly
      levelled at the majority of the Emancipation of Labour group! By
      taking up the hackneyed Bernsteinian refrain about Jacobinism,
      Blanquism, and so on, he defends himself in a manner that only
      bears out the accusation! He shouts about the menace of the
      radical intellectuals in order to drown out his own speeches at
      the Party Congress, which were full of concern for these
      intellectuals.

These “dreadful words”—Jacobinism and the rest—are
      expressive ofopportunismand nothing else. A Jacobin
      who wholly identifies himself with theorganisationof
      the proletariat—a proletariatconsciousof its
      class interests—is arevolutionary
      Social-Democrat. A Girondist who sighs after professors and
      high-school students, who is afraid of the dictatorship of the
      proletariat, and who yearns for the absolute value of democratic
      demands is an opportunist. It is onlyopportunistswho
      can still detect a danger in conspiratorial organisations today,
      when the idea of confining the political struggle to conspiracy
      has been refuted thousands of times in the press and has long
      been refuted and swept aside by the realities of life, and when
      the cardinal importance of mass political agitation has been
      elucidated and reiterated to the point of nausea. The real basis
      of this fear of conspiracy, of Blanquism, is not any feature to
      be found in the practical movement (as Bernstein and Co. have
      long, and vainly, beentrying to make out), but the Girondist
      timidity of the bourgeois intellectual, whose mentality so often
      shows itself among the Social-Democrats of today. Nothing could
      be more comical than these laborious efforts of the newIskrato utter anew wordof warning (uttered
      hundreds of times before) against the tactics of the French
      conspirator revolutionaries of the forties and sixties (No. 62,

      editorial).[16]In the next issue ofIskra, the Girondists
      of present-day Social-Democracy will no doubt show us a group of
      French conspirators of the forties for whom the importance of
      political agitation among the working masses, the importance of
      the labour press as the principal means by which the party
      influences the class, was an elementary truth they had learned
      and assimilated long ago.

However, the tendency of the newIskrato repeat the
      elements and go back to the ABC while pretending to be uttering
      something new is not fortuitous; it is an inevitable consequence
      of the situation Axelrod and Martov find themselves in, now that
      they have landed in the opportunist wing of our Party. There is
      nothing for it. They have to repeat the opportunist phrases,
      they have togo back, in order to try to find in theremote pastsome sort of justification for their
      position, which is indefensible from the point of view of the
      struggle at the Congress and of the shades and divisions in the
      Party that took shape there.To the Akimovite profundities about
      Jacobinism and Blanquism, Comrade Axelrod adds Akimovite
      lamentations to the effect that not only the “Economists”, but
      the “politicians” as well, were “one-sided”, excessively
      “infatuated”, and so on and so forth. Reading the high-flown
      disquisitions on this subject in the newIskra, which
      conceitedly claims to be above all this one-sidedness and
      infatuation, one asks in perplexity: whose portrait is it they
      are painting? where is it that they hear such

      talk?[17]Who does not
      know that the division of the Russian Social-Democrats into
      Economists and politicians has long been obsolete? Go through
      the files ofIskrafor the last year or two before the
      Party Congress, and you will find that the fight against
      “Economism” subsided and came to an end altogether as far back
      as 1902; you will find, for example, that in July 1903 (No. 43),
      “the times of Economism” are spoken of asbeing “definitely
      over”, Economism is considered “dead and buried”, and any
      infatuations of the politicians are regarded as obvious
      atavism. Why, then, do the new editors ofIskrarevert
      to this dead and buried division? Did we fight the Akimovs at
      the Congress on account of the mistakes they made inRabocheye Dyelotwo years ago? If we had, we should
      have been sheer idiots. But everyone knows that we did not, that
      it was not for their old, dead and buried mistakes inRabocheye Dyelothat we fought the Akimovs at the
      Congress, but for the new mistakes they committed in their
      arguments and their voting at the Congress. It was not by their
      stand inRabocheye Dyelo, but by their stand at the
      Congress, that we judged which mistakes were really a thing of
      the past and which still lived and called for controversy. By
      the time of the Congress the old division into Economists and
      politicians no longer existed; but various opportunist trends
      continued to exist. They found expression in the debates and
      voting on a number of issues, and finally led to a new division
      of the Party into “majority” and “minority”. The whole point is
      that the new editors ofIskraare, for obvious reasons,
      trying to gloss over the connection between this new division
      andcontemporaryopportunism in our Party, and are, in
      consequence, compelled to go back from the new division to the
      old one. Their inability to explain the political origin of the
      new division (or their desire, in order to prove how
      accommodating they are, to cast a

				 veil[2][2]See Plekhanov’s article on “Economism” in No. 53 ofIskra.The
subtitle of the article appears to contain a slight misprint. Instead of
“Reflections on the Second Party Congress”, it should apparently read, “on
theLeagueCongress”, or even “onCo-optation”.However
appropriate concessions to personal claims may be under certain
circumstances, it is quite inadmissible (from the Party, not the philistine
standpoint) to confuse the issues that are agitating the Party and to
substitute for the new mistake of Martov and Axelrod, who have begun to
swing from orthodoxy towards opportunism, the old mistake (never recalled
today by anyone except the newIskra)of the Martynovs and
Akimovs, who perhaps may now be prepared to swing from opportunism towards
orthodoxy on many questions of programme and tactics.  —Leninover its origin) compels
      them to keep harping on a division that has long been
      obsolete. Everyone knows that the new division is based on a
      difference over questions oforganisation, which began
      with the controversy over principles of organisation (Paragraph
      1 of the Rules) and ended up with a “practice” worthy of
      anarchists. The old division into Economists and politicians was
      based mainly on a difference over questions oftactics.

In its efforts to justify this retreat from the more complex,
      truly topical and burning issues of Party life to issues that
      have long been settled and have now been dug up artificially,
      the newIskraresorts to an amusing display of
      profundity for which there can be no other name than
      tail-ism. Started by Comrade Axelrod, there runs like a crimson
      thread through all the writing of the newIskrathe
      profound “idea” that content is more important than form, that
      programme and tactics are more important than organisation, that
      “the vitality of an organisation is in direct proportion to the
      volume and value of the content it puts into the movement”, that
      centralism is not an “end in itself”, not an “all-saving
      talisman”, etc., etc. Great and profound truths! The programme
      is indeed more important than tactics, and tactics more
      important than organisation. The alphabet is more important than
      etymology, and etymology more important than syntax—but
      what would we say of people who, after failing in an examination
      in syntax, went about pluming and priding themselves on being
      left in a lower class far another year? Comrade Axelrod argued
      about principles of organisation like an opportunist (Paragraph
      1), and behaved inside the organisation like an anarchist
      (League Congress)—and now he is trying to render
      Social-Democracy more profound. Sour grapes! What is
      organisation, properly speaking? Why, it is only a form. What is
      centralism? After all, it is not a talisman. What is syntax?
      Why, it is less important than etymology; it is only the form of
      combining the elements of etymology.... “Will not Comrade
      Alexandrov agree with us,” the new editors ofIskratriumphantly ask, “when we say that the Congress did much more
      for the centralisation of Party work by drawing up a Party
      programme than by adopting Rules, however perfect the latter may
      seem?” (No. 56, Supplement.) It is to be hoped that this
      classical utterance will acquire a historic fame no less wide
      and no less lasting than Comrade Krichevsky’s celebrated remark
      thatSocial-Democracy, like mankind, always sets itself only
      such tasks as it can perform. For the newIskra’s piece
      of profundity is of exactly the same stamp. Why was Comrade
      Krichevsky’s phrase held up to derision? Because he tried to
      justify the mistake of a section of the Social-Democrats in
      matters of tactics—their inability to set correct political
      tasks—by a commonplace which he wanted to palm off as
      philosophy. In exactly the same way the newIskratries
      to justify the mistake of a section of the Social-Democrats in
      matters of organisation—the intellectualist instability of
      certain comrades, which has led them to the point of anarchistic
      phrase-mongering—by the commonplace that the programme is
      more important than the Rules, that questions of programme are
      more important than questions of organisation! What is this but
      tail-ism? What is it but pluming oneself on having been left in
      a lower class for another year?

The adoption of a programme contributes more to the
      centralisation of the work than the adoption of Rules. How this
      commonplace, palmed off as philosophy, reeks of the mentality of
      the radical intellectual, who has much more in common with
      bourgeois decadence than with Social-Democracy! Why, the word
      centralisation is used in this famous phrase in a sense that is
      nothing butsymbolical. If the authors of the phrase
      are unable or disinclined to think, they might at least have
      recalled the simple fact that the adoption of a programme
      together with the Bundists, far from leading to the
      centralisation of our common work, did not even save us from a
      split. Unity on questions of programme and tactics is an
      essential but by no means a sufficient condition for Party
      unity, for the centralisation of Party work (good God, what
      elementary things one has to spell out nowadays, when all
      concepts have been confused!). The latter requires, in addition,
      unity of organisation, which, in a party that has grown to be
      anything more than a mere family circle, is inconceivable
      without formal Rules, without the subordination of the minority
      to the majority and of the part to the whole. As long as we had
      no unity on the fundamental questions of programme and tactics,
      we bluntly admitted that we were living in a period of disunity
      and separate circles, we bluntly declared that before we could
      unite, lines of demarcation must be drawn; we didnot even talk
      of the forms of a joint organisation, but exclusively discussed
      the new (at that time they really were new) problems of fighting
      opportunism on programme and tactics. At present, as we all
      agree, this fight has already produced a sufficient degree of
      unity, as formulated in the Party programme and the Party
      resolutions on tactics; we had to take the next step, and, by
      common consent, we did take it, working out theformsof a united organisation that would merge all the circles
      together. But now these forms have been half destroyed and we
      have been dragged back, dragged back to anarchistic conduct, to
      anarchistic phrases, to the revival of a circle in place of a
      Party editorial board. And this step back is being justified on
      the plea that the alphabet is more helpful to literate speech
      than a knowledge of syntax!

The philosophy of tail-ism, which flourished three years ago in
      questions of tactics, is being resurrected today in relation to
      questions of organisation. Take the following argument of the
      new editors. “The militant Social-Democratic trend in the
      Party,” says Comrade Alexandrov, “should be maintained not only
      by an ideological struggle, but by definite forms of
      organisation.” Whereupon the editors edifyingly remark: “Not
      bad, this juxtaposition of ideological struggle and forms of
      organisation. The ideological struggle is a process, whereas the
      forms of organisation are only . . . forms [believe it or not,
      that is what they say—No. 56, Supplement, p. 4, bottom of
      col. 1!] designed to clothe a fluid and developing
      content—the developing practical work of the Party.” That
      is positively in the style of the joke about a cannon-ball being
      a cannon-ball and a bomb a bomb! The ideological struggle is a
      process, whereas the forms of organisation are only forms
      clothing the content! The point at issue is whether our
      ideological struggle is to have formsof a higher typeto clothe it, the forms of a party organisation, binding on all,
      or the forms of the old disunity and the old circles. We have
      been dragged back from higher to more primitive forms, and this
      is being justified on the plea that the ideological struggle is
      a process, whereas forms—are only forms. That is just how
      Comrade Krichevsky in bygone days tried to drag us back from
      tactics-as-a-plan to tactics-as-a-process.

Take the newIskra’s pompous talk about the
      “self-training of the proletariat”, directed against those who
      are supposed to be in danger of missing the content because of
      the form (No. 58, editorial). Is this not Akimovism No. 2?
      Akimovism No. 1 justified the backwardness of a section of the
      Social-Democratic intelligentsia in formulating tactical tasks
      by talking about the more “profound” content of “the proletarian
      struggle” and the self-training of the proletariat. Akimovism
      No. 2 justifies the backwardness of a section of the
      Social-Democratic intelligentsia in the theory and practice of
      organisation by equally profound talk about organisation being
      merely a form and the self-training of the proletariat the
      important thing. Let me tell you gentlemen who are so solicitous
      about the younger brother that the proletariat is not afraid of
      organisation and discipline! The proletariat will do nothing to
      have the worthy professors and high-school students who do not
      want to join an organisation recognised as Party members merely
      because they work under the control of an organisation. The
      proletariat is trained for organisation by its whole life, far
      more radically than many an intellectual prig. Having gained
      some understanding of our programme and our tactics, the
      proletariat will not start justifying backwardness in
      organisation by arguing that the form is less important than the
      content. It is not the proletariat, butcertain
      intellectualsin our Party who lackself-trainingin the spirit of organisation and discipline, in the spirit of
      hostility and contempt for anarchistic talk. When they say that
      it is not ripe for organisation, the Akimovs No. 2 libel the
      proletariat just as the Akimovs No. 1 libelled it when they said
      that it was not ripe for the political struggle. The proletarian
      who has become a conscious Social-Democrat and feels himself a
      member of the Party will reject tail-ism in matters of
      organisation with the same contempt as he rejected tail-ism in
      matters of tactics.

Finally, consider the profound wisdom of the newIskra’s “Practical Worker”. “Properly understood,” he
      says, “the idea of a ’militant’ centralist organisation uniting
      and centralising the revolutionaries’activities[the
      italics are to make it look more profound] can only materialise
      naturally if such activitiesexist[both new and
      clever!]; organisationitself, being a form [mark that!], can
      only growsimultaneously[the
      italics are the author’s, as throughout this quotation]with the growth of the revolutionary work which is its content.”
      (No. 57.) Does not this remind you very much of the character in
      the folktale who, on seeing a funeral, cried: “Many happy
      returns of the day”? I am sure there is not a practical worker
      (in the genuine sense of the term) in our Party who does not
      understand that it is precisely the form of our activities
      (i.e., our organisation) that has long been lagging, and lagging
      desperately, behind their content, and that only the Simple
      Simons in the Party could shout to people who are lagging: "Keep
      in line; don’t run ahead !" Compare our Party, let us say, with
      the Bund. There can be no question but that thecontent[3][3]I leave quite aside the fact that thecontentof our
      Party work was mapped out at the Congress (in the programme,
      etc.) in the spirit of revolutionary Social-Democracy onlyat the cost of a struggle, a struggle against those
      very anti-Iskra-ists and that very Marsh whose
      representatives numerically predominate in our “minority”. On
      this question of “content” it would be interesting also to
      compare, let us say, six issues of the oldIskra(Nos. 46-51) with twelve issues of the newIskra(Nos. 52-63). But that will have to wait for some other time.
    —Leninof the work of our Party is
      immeasurably richer, more varied, broader, and deeper than is
      the case with the Bund. The scope of our theoretical views is
      wider, our programme more developed, our influence among the
      mass of the workers (and not merely among the organised
      artisans) broader and deeper, our propaganda and agitation more
      varied; the pulse of the political work of both leaders and rank
      and file is more lively, the popular movements during
      demonstrations and general strikes more impressive, and our work
      among the non-proletarian strata more energetic. But the “form”?
      Compared with the Bund’s, the “form” of our work is lagging
      unpardonably, lagging so that it is an eyesore and brings a
      blush of shame to the cheeks of anyone who does not merely “pick
      his teeth” when contemplating the affairs of his Party. The fact
      that the organisation of our work lags behind its content is our
      weak point, and it was our weak point long before the Congress,
      long before the Organising Committee was formed. The lame and
      undeveloped character of the form makes any serious step in the
      further developmentof the content impossible; it causes a
      shameful stagnation, leads to a waste of energy, to a
      discrepancy between word and deed. We have all been suffering
      wretchedly from this discrepancy, yet along come the Axelrods
      and “Practical Workers” of the newIskrawith their
      profound precept: the form must grow naturally, only
      simultaneously with the content!

That is where a small mistake on the question of organisation
      (Paragraph 1) will lead you if you try tolend
      profundityto nonsense and to find philosophical
      justification for opportunist talk. Marching slowly, in timid

      zigzags![18]—we
      have heard this refrain in relation to
      questions of tactics; we are hearing it again in relation to
      questions of organisation.Tail-ism in questions of
      organisationis a natural and inevitable product of the
      mentality of theanarchistic individualistwhen he
      starts to elevate his anarchistic deviations (which at the
      outset may have been accidental) to a system of views, to
      specialdifferences of principle. At the League
      Congress we witnessed the beginnings of this anarchism; in the
      newIskrawe are witnessing attempts to elevate it to a
      system of views. These attempts strikingly confirm what was
      already said at the Party Congress about the difference between
      the points of view of the bourgeois intellectual who attaches
      himself to the Social-Democratic movement and the proletarian
      who has become conscious of his class interests. For instance,
      this same “Practical Worker” of the newIskrawith
      whose profundity we are already familiar denounces me for
      visualising the Party “as an immense factory” headed by a
      director in the shape of the Central Committee (No. 57,
      Supplement). “Practical Worker” never guesses that this dreadful
      word of his immediately betrays the mentality of the bourgeois
      intellectual unfamiliar with either the practice or the theory
      of proletarian organisation. For the factory, which seems only a
      bogey to some, represents that highest form of capitalist
      co-operation which has united and disciplined the proletariat,
      taught it to organise, and placed it at the head of all the
      other sections of the toiling and exploited population. And
      Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained by capitalism,
      has been and is teaching unstable intellectuals to distinguish
      between the factory as a means of exploitation (discipline based
      on fear of starvation) and the factory as a means of
      organisation (disciplinebased on collective work united by the
      conditions of a technically highly developed form of
      production). The discipline and organisation which come so hard
      to the bourgeois intellectual are very easily acquired by the
      proletariat just because of this factory “schooling”. Mortal
      fear of this school and utter failure to understand its
      importance as an organising factor are characteristic of the
      ways of thinking which reflect the petty-bourgeois mode of life
      and which give rise to the species of anarchism that the German
      Social-Democrats callEdelanarchismus, that is, the
      anarchism of the “noble” gentleman, or aristocratic anarchism,
      as I would call it. This aristocratic anarchism is particularly
      characteristic of the Russian nihilist. He thinks of the Party
      organisation as a monstrous “factory”; he regards the
      subordination of the part to the whole and of the minority to
      the majority as “serfdom” (see Axelrod’s articles); division of
      labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him a
      tragi-comical outcry against transforming people into “cogs and
      wheels” (to turn editors into contributors being considered a
      particularly atrocious species of such transformation); mention
      of the organisational Rules of the Party calls forth a
      contemptuous grimace and the disdainful remark (intended for the
      “formalists”) that one could very well dispense with Rules
      altogether.

Incredible as it may seem, it was a didactic remark of just this
      sort that Comrade Martov addressed to me inIskra,No. 58, quoting, for greater weight, my own words inA Letter
      to a Comrade. Well, what is it if not “aristocratic
      anarchism” and tail-ism to cite examples from the era of
      disunity, the era of the circles, tojustifythe
      preservation and glorification of the circle spirit and anarchy
      in the era of the Party?

Why did we not need Rules before? Because the Party consisted of
      separate circles without any organisational tie between
      them. Any individual could pass from one circle to another at
      his own “sweet will”, for he was not faced with any formulated
      expression of the will of the whole. Disputes within the circles
      were not settled according to Rules, "but by struggle and
      threats to resign", as I put it inA Letter to a

			    Comrade,[4]summarising the experience
      of anumber of circles in general and of our own editorial
      circle of six in particular. In the era of the circles, this was
      natural and inevitable, but it never occurred to anybody to
      extol it, to regard it as ideal; everyone complained of the
      disunity, everyone was distressed by it and eager to see the
      isolated circles fused into a formally constituted party
      organisation. And now that this fusion has taken place, we are
      being dragged back and, under the guise of higher organisational
      views, treated to anarchistic phrase-mongering! To people
      accustomed to the loose dressing-gown and slippers of the

      Oblomov[19]circle domesticity, formal Rules seem narrow,
      restrictive, irksome, mean, and bureaucratic, a bond of serfdom
      and a fetter on the free “process” of the ideological
      struggle. Aristocratic anarchism cannot understand that formal
      Rules are needed precisely in order to replace the narrow circle
      ties by the broad Party tie. It was unnecessary and impossible
      to give formal shape to the internal ties of a circle or the
      ties between circles, for these ties rested on personal
      friendship or on an instinctive “confidence” for which no reason
      was given. The Party tie cannot and must not rest on either of
      these; it must be founded onformal, “bureaucratically”
      worded Rules (bureaucratic from the standpoint of the
      undisciplined intellectual), strict adherence to which can alone
      safeguard us from the wilfulness and caprices characteristic of
      the circles, from the circle wrangling that goes by the name of
      the free “process” of the ideological struggle.

The editors of the newIskratry to trump Alexandrov
      with the didactic remark that “confidence is a delicate thing
      and cannot be hammered into people’s hearts and minds” (No. 56,
      Supplement). The editors do not realise that by this talk about
      confidence,nakedconfidence, they are once more
      betraying their aristocratic anarchism and organisational
      tail-ism. When I was a member of a circle only—whether it
      was the circle of the six editors or theIskraorganisation—I was entitled to justify my refusal, say, to
      work with X merely on the grounds of lack of confidence, without
      stating reason or motive. But now that I have become a member of
      a party, Ihave no rightto plead lack of confidence in
      general, for that would throw open the doors to all the freaks
      and whims of the old circles; I amobligedto give
      formal reasonsfor my “confidence” or “lack of confidence”, that
      is, to cite a formally established principle of our programme,
      tactics or Rules; I must not just declare my “confidence” or
      “lack of confidence” without giving reasons, but must
      acknowledge that my decisions—and generally all decisions
      of any section of the Party—have to be accounted
      forto the whole Party; I am obliged to adhere to aformally prescribedprocedure when giving expression to
      my “lack of confidence” or trying to secure the acceptance of
      the views and wishes that follow from this lack of
      confidence. From thecircleview that “confidence” does
      not have to be accounted for, we have already risen to thePartyview which demands adherence to a formally
      prescribed procedure of expressing, accounting for, andtestingour confidence; but the editors try to drag us
      back, and call their tail-ism new views on organisation!

Listen to the way our so-called Party editors talk about
      writers’ groups that might demand representation on the
      editorial board. “We shall not get indignant and begin to shout
      about discipline”, we are admonished by these aristocratic
      anarchists who have always and everywhere looked down on such a
      thing as discipline. We shall either “arrange the matter”(sic!) with the group, if it is sensible, or just laugh
      at its demands.

Dear me, what a lofty and noble rebuff to vulgar “factory”
      formalism! But in reality it is the old circle phraseology
      furbished up a little and served up to the Party by an editorial
      board which feels that it is not a Party institution, but the
      survival of an old circle. The intrinsic falsity of this
      position inevitably leads to theanarchisticprofundity
      of elevating the disunity they hypocritically proclaim to be
      past and gone to aprincipleof Social-Democratic
      organisation. There is no need for any hierarchy of higher and
      lower Party bodies and authorities—aristocratic anarchism
      regards such a hierarchy as the bureaucratic invention of
      ministries, departments, etc. (see Axelrod’s article); there is
      no need for the part to submit to the whole; there is no need
      for any “formal bureaucratic” definition ofPartymethods of “arranging matters” or of delimiting differences. Let
      the old circle wrangling be sanctified by pompous talk about
      “genuinely Social-Democratic” methods of organisation.

This is where the proletarian who has been through the school of
      the “factory” can and should teach a lesson to anarchistic
      individualism. The class-conscious worker has long since emerged
      from the state of infancy when he used to fight shy of the
      intellectual as such. The class-conscious worker appreciates the
      richer store of knowledge and the wider political outlook which
      he finds among Social-Democratic intellectuals. But as we
      proceed with the building of arealparty, the
      class-conscious worker must learn to distinguish the mentality
      of the soldier of the proletarian army from the mentality of the
      bourgeois intellectual who parades anarchistic phrases; he must
      learn toinsistthat the duties of a Party member be
      fulfilled not only by the rank and file, but by the “people at
      the top” as well; he must learn to treat tail-ism in matters of
      organisation with the same contempt as he used, in days gone by,
      to treat tail-ism in matters of tactics!

Inseparably connected with Girondism and aristocratic anarchism
      is the last characteristic feature of the newIskra’s
      attitude towards matters of organisation, namely, its defence ofautonomismas against centralism. This is the meaning
      in principle (if it has any such

			       meaning[5][5]I leave aside here, as in this section generally, the “co-optational”
meaning of this outcry. —Lenin)

      of its
      outcry against bureaucracy and autocracy, of its regrets about “an
      undeserved disregard for the non-Iskra-ists” (who defended
      autonomism at the Congress), of its comical howls about a demand for
      “unquestioning obedience”, of its bitter complaints of “Jack-in-office
      rule”, etc., etc. The opportunist wing of any party always defends and
      justifies all backwardness, whether in programme, tactics, or
      organisation. The newIskra’s defence of backwardness in
      organisation (its tail-ism) is closely connected with the defence ofautonomism. True, autonomism has, generally speaking, been so
      discredited already by the three years’ propaganda work of the oldIskrathat the newIskrais ashamed,as yet, to
      advocate it openly; it still assures us of its sympathy for centralism, but
      shows it only by printing the word centralism in italics. Actually, it is
      enough to apply the slightest touch of criticism to the “principles” of the
      “genuinely Social-Democratic” (not anarchistic?) quasi-centralism of the newIskrafor the autonomist standpoint to be detected
      at every step. Is it not now clear to all and sundry that on the
      subject of organisation Axelrod and Martov have swung over to
      Akimov? Have they not solemnly admitted it themselves in the
      significant words, “undeserved disregard for the
      non-Iskra-ists”? And what was it but autonomism that
      Akimov and his friends defended at our Party Congress?

It was autonomism (if not anarchism) that Martov and Axelrod
      defended at the League Congress when, with amusing zeal, they
      tried to prove that the part need not submit to the whole, that
      the part is autonomous in defining its relation to the whole,
      that the Rules of the League, in which that relation is
      formulated, are valid in defiance of the will of the Party
      majority, in defiance of the will of the Party centre. And it is
      autonomism that Comrade Martov is now openly defending in the
      columns of the newIskra(No. 60) in the matter of the
      right of the Central Committee to appoint members to the local
      committees. I shall not speak of the puerile sophistries which
      Comrade Martov used to defend autonomism at the League Congress,
      and is still using in the newIskra[6][6]In enumerating various paragraphs of the Rules, Comrade Martovomittedthe one which deals with the relation of the
      whole to the part: the Central Committee “allocates the Party
      forces” (Paragraph 6). Can one allocate forces without
      transferring people from one committee to another? It is
      positively awkward to have to dwell on such elementary things.
    —Lenin—the

      important thing here is to note the undoubted tendency todefend autonomism against centralism, which is a
      fundamental characteristic of opportunism in matters of
      organisation.

Perhaps the only attempt to analyse the concept bureaucracy is
      the distinction drawn in the newIskra(No. 53) between
      the “formaldemocraticprinciple” (author’s italics)
      and the “formalbureaucraticprinciple”. This
      distinction (which, unfortunately, was no more developed or
      explained than the reference to the non-Iskra-ists)
      contains a grain of truth. Bureaucracyversusdemocracy
      is in fact centralismversusautonomism; it is the
      organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy as
      opposed to the organisational principle of opportunist
      Social-Democracy. The latter strives to proceed from the bottom
      upward, and,therefore, wherever possible and as far as
      possible, upholds autonomism and “democracy”, carried (by the
      overzealous) to the point of anarchism. The former strives to
      proceed from the top downward, and upholds an extension of the
      rights and powers of the centre in relation to the parts. In the
      period of disunity and separate circles, this top from which
      revolutionary Social-Democracy strove to proceed
      organisationally was inevitably one of the circles, the one
      enjoying most influence by virtue of its activity and its
      revolutionary consistency (in our case, theIskraorganisation). In the period of the restoration of actual Party
      unity and dissolution of the obsolete circles in this unity,
      this top is inevitably theParty Congress, as the
      supreme organ of the Party; the Congress as far as possible
      includes representatives of all the active organisations, and,
      by appointing the central institutions (often with a membership
      which satisfies the advanced elements of the Party more than the
      backward and is more to the taste of its revolutionary than its
      opportunist wing), makes them the top until the next
      Congress. Such, at any rate, is the case among the
      Social-Democratic Europeans, although little by little this
      custom, so abhorrent in principle to anarchists, is beginning to
      spread—not without difficulty and not without conflicts and
      squabbles—to the Social-Democratic Asiatics.

It is highly interesting to note that these fundamental
      characteristics of opportunism in matters of organisation
      (autonomism, aristocratic or intellectualist anarchism,
      tail-ism, and Girondism) are,mutatis mutandis(with
      appropriate modifications), to be observed in all the
      Social-Democratic parties in the world, wherever there is a
      division into a revolutionary and an opportunist wing (and where
      is there not?). Only quite recently this was very strikingly
      revealed in the German Social-Democratic Party, when its defeat
      at the elections in the 20th electoral division of Saxony (known
      as the Göhre

      incident[7][7]Göhre was returned to the Reichstag on June 16, 1903, from
      the 15th division of Saxony, but after the Dresden

      Congress[22]he resigned his seat. The electorate of the 20th division, which had fallen
      vacant on the death of Rosenow, wanted to put forward Göhre as
      candidate. The Central Party Executive and the Regional Party Executive for
      Saxony opposed this, and while they had no formalright to forbid
      Göhre’s nomination, they succeeded in getting him to decline. The
      Social-Democrats were defeated at the polls.
    —Lenin)

brought the question of theprinciplesof party organisation to the fore. That this
      incident should have become an issue of principle was largely
      due to the zeal of the German opportunists. Gohre (an ex-parson,
      author of the fairly well-known bookDrei Monate

      Fabrikarbeiter,[8]and one of the
      “heroes” of the Dresden Congress) is himself an extreme
      opportunist, and theSozialistische Monatshefte(Socialist

	Monthly,)[20]the organ of the consistent German
      opportunists, at once “took up the cudgels” on his behalf.

Opportunism in programme is naturally connected with opportunism
      in tactics and opportunism in organisation. The exposition of
      the “new” point of view was undertaken by Comrade Wolfgang
      Heine. To give the reader some idea of ithe political complexion
      of this typical intellectual, who on joining the
      Social-Democratic movement brought with him opportunist habits
      of thought, it is enough to say that Comrade Wolfgang Heine is
      something less than a German Comrade Akimov and something more
      than a German Comrade Egorov.

Comrade Wolfgang Heine took the field in theSozialistische
      Monatsheftewith no less pomp than Comrade Axelrod in the
      newIskra. The very title of his article is priceless:
      “Democratic Observations on the Göhre Incident”(Sozialistische Monatshefte, No. 4, April). The
      contents are no less thunderous. Comrade W. Heine rises up in
      arms against “encroachments on the autonomy of the
      constituency”, champions “the democratic principle”, and
      protests against the interference of an “appointed authority”
      (i.e., the Central Party Executive) in the free election of
      deputies by the people. The point at issue, Comrade W. Heine
      admonishes us, is not a random incident, but a general
      "tendency towards bureaucracy and centralism in the
      Party", a tendency, he says, which was to be observed
      before, but which is now becoming particularly dangerous. It
      must be “recognised as a principle that the local institutions
      of the Party are the vehicles of Party life” (a plagiarism on
      Comrade Martov’s pamphletOnce More in the Minority). We
      must not “accustom ourselves to having all important political
      decisionscome from one centre”, and must warn the
      Party against “a doctrinaire policy which loses contact with
      life” (borrowed from Comrade Martov’s speech at the Party
      Congress to the effect that “life will assert
      itself”). Rendering his argument more profound, Comrade W. Heine
      says: “. . . If we go down to the roots of the matter and leave
      aside personal conflicts, which here, as everywhere, have played
      no small part, this bitterness against therevisionists[the italics are the author’s and evidently hint at a
      distinction between fighting revisionism and fighting
      revisionists] will be found to be mainly expressive of the
      distrust of the Party officialdom for ’outsiders’
      [W. Heine had apparently not yet read the pamphlet about
      combating the state of siege, and therefore resorted to an
      Anglicism—Outsidertum], the distrust of tradition
      for the unusual, of the impersonal institution for everything
      individual [see Axelrod’s resolution at the League Congress on
      the suppression of individual initiative]—in short, of that
      tendency which we have defined above as a tendency towards
      bureaucracy and centralism in the Party.”

The idea of “discipline” inspires Comrade W. Heine with a no
      less noble disgust than Comrade Axelrod.... “The
      revisionists,” he writes, “have been accused of lack of
      discipline for having written for theSozialistische
      Monatshefte, an organ whose Social-Democratic character has
      even been denied because it is notcontrolled by the
      Party. This very attempt to narrow down the concept
      ’Social-Democratic’, this insistence ondisciplinein
      the sphere of ideological production, where absolute freedom
      should prevail [remember: the ideological struggle is a process
      whereas the forms of organisation are only forms], demonstrates
      the tendency towards bureaucracy and the suppression of
      individuality.” And W. Heine goes on and on, fulminating against
      this detestable tendency to create “onebig
      all-embracing organisation, as centralised as possible,oneset of tactics, andonetheory”, against
      the demand for “implicit obedience”, “blind submission”, against
      “oversimplified centralism”, etc., etc., literally “à
      laAxelrod”.

The controversy started by W. Heine spread, and as there were no
      squabbles about co-optation in the German Party to obscure that
      issue, and as the German Akimovs display their complexion not
      only at congresses, but all the time, ina periodical of their
      own, the argument soon boiled down to an analysis of the
      principles of the orthodox and revisionist trends on the
      question of organisation. Karl Kautsky came forward (in theNeue Zeit, 1904, No. 28, in the article "Wahlkreis
	und Partei"—“Constituency and Party”) as one of the
      spokesmen of the revolutionary trend (which, exactly as in our
      Party, was of course accused of “dictatorship”, “inquisitorial”
      tendencies, and other dreadful things). W. Heine’s article, he
      says, “expresses the line of thought of the whole revisionist
      trend”. Not only in Germany, but in France and Italy as well,
      the opportunists are all staunch supporters of autonomism, of a
      slackening of Party discipline, of reducing it to naught;
      everywhere their tendencies lead todisorganisationand
      to perverting “the democratic principle” intoanarchism. “Democracy does not mean absence of
      authority,” Karl Kautsky informs the opportunists on the subject
      of organisation, “democracy does not mean anarchy; it means the
      rule of the masses over their representatives, in distinction to
      other forms of rule, where the supposed servants of the people
      are in reality their masters.” Kautsky traces at length the
      disruptive role played by opportunist autonomism in various
      countries; he shows that it is precisely the influx of “a
	great number of bourgeois

	elements”[9][9]Kautsky mentionsJaurèsas an example. The more these people deviated towards opportunism, the
	more “they were bound to consider Party discipline an impermissible
	constraint on their free personality”. —Lenininto the Social-Democratic movement that is strengthening
      opportunism, autonomism, and the tendency to violate discipline;
      and once more he reminds us that “organisation is the weapon
      that will emancipate the proletariat”, that “organisation is the
      characteristic weapon of the proletariat in the class
      struggle”.

In Germany, where opportunism is weaker than in France or Italy,
      "autonomist tendencies have so far led only to more or less
      passionate declamations against dictators and grand inquisitors,
      against

      excommunication[10][10]Bannstrahl: excommunication. This is the German equivalent of the
Russian “state of siege” and “emergency laws”. It is the “dreadful word”
      of the German opportunists. —Leninand heresy-hunting, and to
      endless cavilling and squabbling, which would only result in
      endless strife if replied to by the other side”.

It is not surprising that in Russia, where opportunism in the
      Party is even weaker than in Germany, autonomist tendencies
      should have produced fewer ideas and more “passionate
      declamations” and squabbling.

It is not surprising that Kautsky arrives at the following
      conclusion: “There is perhaps no other question on which
      revisionism in all countries, despite its multiplicity of form
      and hue, is so alike as on the question of organisation.”
      Kautsky, too, defines the basic tendencies of orthodoxy and
      revisionism in this sphere with the help of the “dreadful word”:
      bureaucracyversusdemocracy. We are told, he says,
      that to give the Party leadership the right to influence the
      selection of candidates (for parliament) by the constituencies
      is “a shameful encroachment on the democratic principle, which
      demands that all political activity proceed from the bottom
      upward, by the independent activity of the masses, and not from
      the top downward, in a bureaucratic way.... But if there is
      any democratic principle, it is that the majority must have
      predominance over the minority, and not the other way
      round....” The election of a member of parliament by any
      constituency is an important matter for the Party as a whole,
      which should influence the nomination of candidates, if only
      through its representatives(Vertrauensmanner). “Whoever considers this too bureaucratic or centralistic let
      him suggest that candidates be nominated by the direct vote of
      the Party membership at large [sīmtliche
      Parteigenossen]. If he thinks this is not practicable, he
      must not complain of a lack of democracy when this function,
      like many others that concern the Party as a whole, is exercised
      by one or several Party bodies.” It has long been “common law”
      in the German Party for constituencies to “come to a friendly
      understanding” with the Party leadership about the choice of
      candidates. “But the Party has grown too big for this tacit
      common law to suffice any longer. Common law ceases to be law
      when it ceases to be accepted as a matter of course, when its
      stipulations, and even its very existence, are called in
      question. Then it becomes necessary to formulate the law
      specifically, to codify it” . . . to go over to more "precise
      statutory

      definition[11][11]It is highly instructive to compare these remarks of Kautsky’s
      about the replacement of a tacitly recognised common law by aformally deflned statutory law with that whole “change-over”
      which our Party in general, and the editorial board in
      particular, have been undergoing since the Party
      Congress. Cf. the speech of V. I. Zasulich (at the League
      Congress, p. 66 et seq.), who does not seem to realise the full
      significance of this change-over.
    —Lenin[statutarische Festlegung]and, accordingly, greater strictness [grössere
      Straffheit] of organisation”.

Thus you have, in a different environment, the same struggle
      between the opportunist and the revolutionary wing of the Party
      on the question of organisation, the same conflict between
      autonomism and centralism, between democracy and “bureaucracy”,
      between the tendency to relax and the tendency to tighten
      organisation and discipline, between the mentality of the
      unstable intellectual and that of the staunch proletarian,
      between intellectualist individualism and proletarian
      solidarity. What, one asks, was the attitude to this conflict ofbourgeois democracy—not the bourgeois democracy
      which prankish history has only promised in private to show to
      Comrade Axelrod some day, but the real and actual bourgeois
      democracy which in Germany has spokesmen no less shrewd and
      observant than our own gentlemen ofOsvobozhdeniye?
      German bourgeois democracy at once reacted to the new
      controversy, and—like Russian bourgeois democracy, like
      bourgeois democracy everywhere and always—sided solidly
      with the opportunist wing of the Social-Democratic Party. TheFrankfurter Zeitung, leading organ of the German stock
      exchange, published a thunderous editorial(Frankfurter
      Zeitung, April 7, 1904, No. 97, evening edition) which
      shows that shameless plagiarising of Axelrod is becoming a
      veritable disease with the German press. The stern democrats of
      the Frankfort stock exchange lash out furiously at the
      “absolutism” in the Social-Democratic Party, at the “party
      dictatorship”, at the “autocratic rule of the Party
      authorities”, at the “interdicts” which are intended
      “concurrently to chastise revisionism as a whole” (recall the
      “false accusation of opportunism”), at the insistence on “blind
      obedience”, “deadening discipline”, “servile subordination”, and
      the transforming of Party members into “political corpses” (that
      is a good bit stronger than cogs and wheels!). “All
      distinctiveness of personality”, the knights of the stockexchange indignantly exclaim at the sight of the undemocratic
      regime among the Social-Democrats, "all individuality is to be
      held in opprobrium, because it is feared that they might lead to
      the French order of things, to Jaurèsism and Millerandism,
      as was stated in so many words by Sindermann, who made the
      report on the subject" at the Party Congress of the Saxon
      Social-Democrats.

And so, insofar as the new catchwords of the newIskraon organisation contain any principles at all, there can be no
      doubt that they are opportunist principles. This conclusion is
      confirmed both by the whole analysis of our Party Congress,
      which divided into a revolutionary and an opportunist wing, and
      by the example ofallEuropean Social-Democratic
      parties, where opportunism in organisation finds expression in
      the same tendencies, in the same accusations, and very often in
      the same catchwords. Of course, the national peculiarities of
      the various parties and the different political conditions in
      different countries leave their impress and make German
      opportunism quite dissimilar from French, French opportunism
      from Italian, and Italian opportunism from Russian. But the
      similarity of the fundamental division of all these parties into
      a revolutionary and an opportunist wing, the similarity of the
      line of thought and the tendencies of opportunism in
      organisation stand out clearly in spite of all this difference
      of

      conditions.[12][12]No one will doubt today that the old division of the Russian
      Social-Democrats into Economists and politicians on questions of
      tactics was similar to the division of the whole international
      Social-Democratic movement into opportunists and
      revolutionaries, although the difference between Comrades
      Martynov and Akimov, on the one hand, and Comrades von Vollmar
      and von Elm or Jaurés and Millerand, on the other, is very
      great. Nor can there be any doubt about the similarity of the
      main divisions on questions of organisation, in spite of the
      enormous difference between the conditions of politically
      unenfranchised and politically free countries. It is extremely
      charactcristic that the highly principled editors of the newIskra, while briefly touching on the controversy
      between Kautsky and Heine (No. 64), timidlyevadeddiscussing the trends ofprinciplemanifested on
      questions of organisation by opportunism and orthodoxygenerally.—LeninWith large numbers of radical
      intellectuals in theranks of our Marxists and our
      Social-Democrats, the opportunism which their mentality produces
      has been, and is, bound to exist, in the most varied spheres and
      in the most varied forms. We fought opportunism on the
      fundamental problems of our world conception, on the questions
      of our programme, and the complete divergence of aims inevitably
      led to an irrevocable break between the Social-Democrats and the
      liberals who had corrupted our legal Marxism. We fought
      opportunism on tactical issues, and our divergence with Comrades
      Krichevsky and Akimov on these less important issues was
      naturally only temporary, and was not accompanied by the
      formation of different parties. We must now vanquish the
      opportunism of Martov and Axelrod on questions of organisation,
      which are, of course, less fundamental than questions of
      tactics, let alone of programme, but which have now come to the
      forefront in our Party life.

When we speak of fighting opportunism, we must never forget a
      characteristic feature of present-day opportunism in every
      sphere, namely, its vagueness, amorphousness, elusiveness. An
      opportunist, by his very nature, will always evade taking a
      clear and decisive stand, he will always seek a middle course,
      he will always wriggle like a snake between two mutually
      exclusive points of view and try to “agree” with both and reduce
      his differences of opinion to petty amendments, doubts, innocent
      and pious suggestions, and so on and so forth. Comrade Eduard
      Bernstein, an opportunist in questions of programme, “agrees”
      with the revolutionary programme of his party, and although he
      would no doubt like to have it “radically revised”, he considers
      this untimely, inexpedient, not so important as the elucidation
      of “general principles” of “criticism” (which mainly consist in
      uncritically borrowing principles and catchwords from bourgeois
      democracy).Comrade von Vollmar, an opportunist in questions of
      tactics, also agrees with the old tactics of revolutionary
      Social-Democracy and also confines himself mostly to
      declamations, petty amendments, and sneers rather than openly
      advocates any definite “ministerial”

      tactics.[21]Comrades Martov and Axelrod, opportunists in questions of organisation, have
      also failed so far to produce, though directly challenged to do
      so, any definite statement of principles that could be “fixed by
      statute”; they toowould like, they most certainly would like, a
      “radical revision” of our Rules of Organisation(Iskra,No. 58, p. 2, col. 3), but they would prefer to devote
      themselves first to “general problems of organisation” (for a
      really radical revision of our Rules, which, in spite of
      Paragraph 1, are centralist Rules, would inevitably lead, if
      carried out in the spirit of the newIskra, to
      autonomism; and Comrade Martov, of course, does not like to
      admit even to himself that he tendsin principletowards autonomism). Their “principles” of organisation
      therefore display all the colours of the rainbow. The
      predominant item consists of innocent passionate declamations
      against autocracy and bureaucracy, against blind obedience and
      cogs and wheels—declamations so innocent that it is still
      very difficult to discern in them what is really concerned with
      principle and what is really concerned with co-optation. But as
      it goes on, the thing gets worse: attempts to analyse and
      precisely define this detestable “bureaucracy” inevitably lead
      to autonomism; attempts to “lend profundity” to their stand and
      vindicate it inevitably lead to justifying backwardness, to
      tail-ism, to Girondist phrase-mongering. At last there emerges
      the principle ofanarchism, as the sole really definite
      principle, which for that reason stands out in practice in
      particular relief (practice is always in advance of
      theory). Sneering at
      discipline—autonomism—anarchism—there you have
      the ladder which our opportunism in matters of organisation now
      climbs and now descends, skipping from rung to rung and
      skilfully dodging any definite statement of its

      principles.[13][13]Those who recall the debate on Paragraph 1 will now clearly
      see that the mistake committed by Comrade Martov and Comrade
      Axelrod over Paragraph 1 hadinevitablyto lead,
      when developed and deepened, to opportunism in matters of
      organisation. Comrade Martov’s fundamental
      idea—self-enrolment in the Party—was this same
      false “democracy”, the idea of building the Party from the
      bottom upward. My idea, on the other hand, was
      “bureaucratic” in the sense that the Party was to be built
      from the top downward, from the Party Congress to the
      individual Party organisations. The mentality of the
      bourgeois intellectual, anarchistic phrase-mongering, and
      opportunist, tail-ist profundity were all already displayed
      in the debate on Paragraph 1. Comrade Martov says in hisState of Siege(p. 20) that “new ideas are
      beginning to be worked out” by the newIskra.That
      is true in the sense that he and Axelrod are really pushing
      ideas in a new direction, beginning with Paragraph 1. The
      only troubleis thatthisdirection is an
      opportunist one. The more they “work” in this direction, and
      the more this work is cleared of squabbling over
      co-optation, the deeper will they sink in the mire. Comrade
      Plekhanov already perceived this clearly at the Party
      Congress, and in his article “What Should Not Be Done”
      warned them once again: I am prepared, he as much as said,
      even to co-opt you, only don’t continue along this road
      which can only lead to opportunism and anarchism. Martov and
      Axelrod would not follow this good advice: What? Not
      continue along this road? Agree with Lenin that the
      co-optation clamour is nothing but squabbling? Never! We’ll
      show him that we are men of principle!—And they
      have. They have clearly shown everyone that if they have any
      new principles at all, they are opportunist principles.
    —LeninExactly the same stagesare displayed by opportunism in matters of
      programme and tactics: sneering at “orthodoxy”, narrowness, and
      immobility—revisionist “criticism” and
      ministerialism—bourgeois democracy.

There is a close psychological connection between this hatred of
      discipline and that incessant nagging note ofinjurywhich is to be detected in all the writings of all opportunists
      today in general, and of our minority in particular. They are
      being persecuted, hounded, ejected, besieged, and bullied. There
      is far more psychological and political truth in these
      catchwords than was probably suspected even by the author of the
      pleasant and witty joke about bullies and bullied. For you have
      only to take the minutes of our Party Congress to see that the
      minority are all those who suffer from a sense of injury, all
      those who at one time or another and for one reason or another
      were offended by the revolutionary Social-Democrats. There are
      the Bundists and theRabocheye Dyelo-ists, whom we
      “offended” so badly that they withdrew from the Congress; there
      are theYuzhny Rabochy-ists, who were mortally offended
      by the slaughter of organisations in general and of their own in
      particular; there is Comrade Makhov, who had to put up with
      offence every time he took the floor (for every time he did, he
      invariably made a fool of himself) and lastly, there are Comrade
      Martov and Comrade Axelrod, who were offended by the “false
      accusation of opportunism” in connection with Paragraph 1 of the
      Rules and by their defeat in the elections. All these mortal
      offences were not the accidental outcome of impermissible
      witticisms, rude behaviour,frenzied controversy, slamming of
      doors, and shaking of fists, as so many philistines imagine to
      this day, but the inevitable political outcome of the whole
      three years’ ideological work ofIskra. If in the
      course of these three years we were not just wagging our
      tongues, but giving expression to convictions which were to be
      translated into deeds, we could not but fight the
      anti-Iskra-ists and the “Marsh” at the Congress. And
      when, together with Comrade Martov, who had fought in the front
      line with visor up, we had offended such heaps of people, we had
      only to offend Comrade Axelrod and Comrade Martov ever such a
      little bit for the cup to overflow. Quantity was transformed
      into quality. The negation was negated. All the offended forgot
      their mutual scores, fell weeping into each other’s arms, and
      raised the banner of “revolt against

      Leninism”.[14][14]This amazing expression is Comrade Martov’s(State of
	  Siege, p. 68) Comrade Martov waited until he was five
      to one before raising the “revolt” against me alone. Comrade
      Martov argues very unskilfully: he wants to destroy his
      opponent by paying him the highest compliments.
    —Lenin

A revolt is a splendid thing when it is the advanced elements
      who revolt against the reactionary elements. When the
      revolutionary wing revolts against the opportunist wing, it is a
      good thing. When the opportunist wing revolts against the
      revolutionary wing, it is a bad business.

Comrade Plekhanov is compelled to take part in this bad business
      in the capacity of a prisoner of war, so to speak. He tries to
      “vent his spleen” by fishing out isolated awkward phrases by the
      author of some resolution in favour of the “majority”, and
      exclaiming: “Poor Comrade Lenin! A fine lot his orthodox
      supporters are!”(Iskra, No. 63, Supplement.)

Well, Comrade Plekhanov, all I can say is that if I am poor, the
      editors of the newIskraare downright paupers. However
      poor I may be, I have not yet reached such utter destitution as
      to have to shut my eyes to the Party Congress and hunt for
      material for the exercise of my wit in the resolutions of
      committeemen. However poor I may be, I am a thousand times
      better off than those whose supporters do not utter an awkward
      phrase inadvertently, but on every issue—whether of
      organisation, tactics, or programme—adherestubbornly and
      persistently to principles which are the very opposite of the
      principles of revolutionary Social-Democracy. However poor I may
      be, I have not yet reached the stage of having toconceal
      from the publicthe praises lavished on me by such
      supporters. And that is what the editors of the newIskrahave to do.

Reader, do you know what the Voronezh Committee of the Russian
      Social-Democratic Labour Party stands for? If not, read the
      minutes of the Party Congress. You will learn from them that the
      line of that committee is wholly expressed by ComradeAkimov and
      Comrade Brouckère, who at the Congress fought the
      revolutionary wing of the Party all along the line, and who
      scores of times were ranked as opportunists by everybody, from
      Comrade Plekhanov to Comrade Popov. Well, this Voronezh
      Committee, in its January leaflet (No. 12, January 1904), makes
      the following statement:

“A great and important event in the life of our steadily growing
      Party took place last year: the Second Congress of the
      R.S.D.L.P., a congress of the representatives of its
      organisations. Convening a Party congress is a very complicated
      matter, and, under the prevailing monarchical regime, a very
      dangerous and difficult one. It is therefore not surprising that
      it was carried outin a far from perfect way, and that
      the Congress itself, although it passed off without mishap, did
      not live up to all the Party’s expectations. The comrades whom
      the Conference of 1902 commissioned to convene the Congress were
      arrested, andthe Congress was arranged by persons who
      represented only one of the trends in Russian Social-Democracy,
      viz.,the ’Iskra’-ists.Manyorganisations of Social-Democrats who did not happen to beIskra-ists were not invited to take part in the work of
      the Congress;partly for this reasonthe task of
      drawing upa programme and Rulesfor the Party was
      carried out by the Congress in anextremely imperfect
      manner; the delegates themselves admit that there are
      important flaws in the Rules ’which may lead to dangerous
      misunderstandings’. TheIskra-ists themselves split at
      the Congress, and many prominent members of our R.S.D.L.P. who
      formerly appeared to be in full agreement with theIskraprogramme of action have come to see that many of
      its views, advocated mainly byLenin and Plekhanov, are
      impracticable. Although these last gained the upper hand at the
      Congress, the pulse of real life and the requirements of the
      practical work, in which all the non-Iskra-ists are
      taking part, are quickly correcting the mistakes of the
      theoreticians and have, since the Congress, already introduced
      important modifications.’Iskra’ has changed greatly and
      prorrisesto pay careful heed to the demands of all workers
      in the Social-Democratic movement generally. Thus, althoughthe results of the Congress will have to be revisedat
      the next Congress, and, as is obvious to thedelegates
      themselves, are unsatisfactoryand therefore cannot be
      accepted by the Party as unimpeachable decisions, the
      Congress clarified the situation in the Party, provided much
      material for the further theoretical and organising activity of
      the Party, and was an experience of immense instructive value
      for the work of the Party as a whole The decisions of the
      Congress and the Rules it drew up will betaken into
      accountby all the organisations, but many willrefrain
      from being guided by them exclusively,in view oftheir manifest imperfections.“Fully realising the importance of the work of the Party as a
      whole, the Voronezh Committee activelyrespondedin all
      matters concerning the organisation of the Congress. It fully
      appreciates the importance of what took place at the Congress
      andwelcomes the change under gone by ’Iskra’, which
      has become the Central Organ (chief organ).

“A great and important event in the life of our steadily growing
      Party took place last year: the Second Congress of the
      R.S.D.L.P., a congress of the representatives of its
      organisations. Convening a Party congress is a very complicated
      matter, and, under the prevailing monarchical regime, a very
      dangerous and difficult one. It is therefore not surprising that
      it was carried outin a far from perfect way, and that
      the Congress itself, although it passed off without mishap, did
      not live up to all the Party’s expectations. The comrades whom
      the Conference of 1902 commissioned to convene the Congress were
      arrested, andthe Congress was arranged by persons who
      represented only one of the trends in Russian Social-Democracy,
      viz.,the ’Iskra’-ists.Manyorganisations of Social-Democrats who did not happen to beIskra-ists were not invited to take part in the work of
      the Congress;partly for this reasonthe task of
      drawing upa programme and Rulesfor the Party was
      carried out by the Congress in anextremely imperfect
      manner; the delegates themselves admit that there are
      important flaws in the Rules ’which may lead to dangerous
      misunderstandings’. TheIskra-ists themselves split at
      the Congress, and many prominent members of our R.S.D.L.P. who
      formerly appeared to be in full agreement with theIskraprogramme of action have come to see that many of
      its views, advocated mainly byLenin and Plekhanov, are
      impracticable. Although these last gained the upper hand at the
      Congress, the pulse of real life and the requirements of the
      practical work, in which all the non-Iskra-ists are
      taking part, are quickly correcting the mistakes of the
      theoreticians and have, since the Congress, already introduced
      important modifications.’Iskra’ has changed greatly and
      prorrisesto pay careful heed to the demands of all workers
      in the Social-Democratic movement generally. Thus, althoughthe results of the Congress will have to be revisedat
      the next Congress, and, as is obvious to thedelegates
      themselves, are unsatisfactoryand therefore cannot be
      accepted by the Party as unimpeachable decisions, the
      Congress clarified the situation in the Party, provided much
      material for the further theoretical and organising activity of
      the Party, and was an experience of immense instructive value
      for the work of the Party as a whole The decisions of the
      Congress and the Rules it drew up will betaken into
      accountby all the organisations, but many willrefrain
      from being guided by them exclusively,in view oftheir manifest imperfections.

“Fully realising the importance of the work of the Party as a
      whole, the Voronezh Committee activelyrespondedin all
      matters concerning the organisation of the Congress. It fully
      appreciates the importance of what took place at the Congress
      andwelcomes the change under gone by ’Iskra’, which
      has become the Central Organ (chief organ).

Although the state of affairs in the Party and the Central
      Committee does not satisfy usas yet, we are confident
      that by joint efforts the difficult work of organising the Party
      will be perfected. In view of false rumours, the Voronezh
      Committee informs the comrades that there is no question of the
      Voronezh Committee leaving the Party. The Voronezh Committee
      perfectly realises what a dangerous precedent would be created
      by the withdrawal of a workers’ organisation like the Voronezh
      Committee from the R.S.D.L.P.,what a reproach this would be
      to the Party, and how disadvantageous it would be to
      workers’ organisations which might follow this example. We must
      not cause new splits, but persistently strive to unite all
      class-conscious workers and socialists in one party. Besides,
      the Second Congress was not a constituent congress, but only a
      regular one. Expulsion from the Party can only be by decision of
      a Party court, and no organisation, not even the Central
      Committee, has the right to expel any Social-Democratic
      organisation from the Party. Furthermore, under Paragraph 8 of
      the Rules adopted by the Second Congress every organisation is
      autonomous in its local affairs, andthe Voronezh Committee
      is accordingly fully entitled to put its views on organisation
      into practice and to advocate them in the Party.”

The editors of the newIskra, in quoting this leaflet
      in No. 61, reprinted the second half of this tirade, which we
      give here in large type; as for the first half, here printed in
      small type, the editorspreferred to omit it.

They were ashamed.

[1]These articles were included in the collection “Iskra” over
   Two Years, Part II, p. 122 et seq. (St. Petersburg, 1906). (Author’s
   note to 1907 edition.—Ed.)  —Lenin

[2]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[3]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[4]See present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 231-52.—Ed.

[5]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[6]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[7]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[8]Three Months as a
      Factory Worker.—Ed.

[9]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[10]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[11]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[12]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[13]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[14]Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[15]The reference is to the views of P. B. Struve, leading representative of
      “legal Marxism”, and his bookCritical Remarks on the
      Subject of Russia’s Economic Development(1894). Already in this early
      work Struve’s bourgeois-apologetic thinking was clearly discernible. The
      views of Struve and the other “legal Marxists” were assailedby Lenin in a paper read to a St. Petersburg Marxist circle in the autumn of
      1894, entitled “The Reflection of Marxism in Bourgeois
      Literature”. This paper Lenin then worked up, at the close of 1894
      antI the beginning of 1895, into his essay “The Economic Content of
      Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book” (present
      edition, Vol. 1, pp. 333-507).

[16]Lenin is referring to Martov’sIskraarticle
      “Is This tile Way To Prepare?”, in which Martov opposed preparations
      for an all-Russia armed uprising, regarding them as utopian
      conspiracy.

[17]A quotation from Lermontov’s poem “Journalist, Reader, and
      Writer”.

[18]A line from the satirical “Hymn of the Contemporary Russian
      Socialist” published in No. I ofZarya(April 1901) and
      ridiculing the Economists with their trailing after the spontaneous
      movement. Signed Nartsis Tuporylov (Narcissus Blunt-Snout), the
      “Hymn”
      was written by Martov.

[19]Oblomov—the landowner hero of Goncharov’s novel of the same
      name, an embodiment of supine inertia and a passive, vegetating existence.

[22]TheDresden Congress of the German Social-Democratic Partywas held
      on September 13-20, 1903. It condemned the revisionists Bernstein, Braun,
      Giihre, David, and others, but did not expel them from the party, and they
      continued to have full scope for
      preaching their opportunist views.

[20]TheSozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly), published in Berlin
      from 1897 to 1933, was the chief organ of the opportunists in the German
      Social-Democratic Party and one of the organs of international
      opportunism. During the First World War it took a social-chauvinist stand.

[21]“Ministerial” tactics,
      “ministerialism”, “ministerial socialism” (or
      Millerandism)—the opportunist tactics of participation by Socialists
      in reactionary bourgeois governments. The term originated when in 1899 the
      French Socialist Millerand joined the bourgeois government of
      Waldeck-Rousseau.